AWS Transfer for SFTP

Fully managed SFTP service

AWS Transfer for SFTP is a fully managed service that enables the transfer of files directly into and out of Amazon S3 using the Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)—also known as Secure Shell (SSH) File Transfer Protocol. AWS helps you seamlessly migrate your file transfer workflows to AWS Transfer for SFTP—by integrating with existing authentication systems, and providing DNS routing with Amazon Route 53—so nothing changes for your customers and partners, or their applications. With your data in S3, you can use it with AWS services for processing, analytics, machine learning, and archiving. Getting started with AWS Transfer for SFTP (AWS SFTP) is easy; there is no infrastructure to buy and setup.

Introduction to AWS File Transfer for SFTP

Benefits

No SFTP servers to manage

You no longer have to purchase and run your own SFTP servers and storage to securely exchange data with partners and customers. AWS SFTP manages the infrastructure behind your SFTP endpoint for you, which includes auto-scaling capacity and maintaining high availability with a multi-AZ architecture.

Seamless SFTP migrations

AWS SFTP is fully compatible with the SFTP standard, connects to your Active Directory, LDAP and other identity systems, and works with Route 53 DNS routing. For you, this means you can migrate SFTP-based workflows to AWS without changing your existing authentication systems, domain and hostnames. Your external customers and partners can continue to exchange files with you, without changing their applications, processes, client software configurations or behavior.

Natively integrated with S3 for API-driven processes

Because AWS SFTP stores your data in S3, you can use it easily with API-driven data processing and analytics workflows, unlike third-party tools that may keep your files in silos. AWS SFTP is also natively integrated with AWS management services, simplifying your security, monitoring and auditing operations.

How it works

Use cases

Sharing files with third-parties

Nearly every business has to exchange files with external firms securely, whether they are large technical documents for customers, media files for a marketing agency, or invoices from suppliers. Many of these file exchanges have used SFTP for decades. AWS SFTP makes it easy to support recurring data sharing processes, as well as one-off secure file transfers where setting up access to internal systems for external teams is difficult or impractical.

Marketplace data distribution

Marketplaces, regulators, and financial exchanges publish market data for authorized participants in their ecosystems. Although SFTP provides a well-established and secure way to share data with subscribers, the publisher bears high operational costs to run file transfer infrastructure that must be highly available. AWS SFTP enables data publishers to focus on their goals, for example running efficient marketplaces, not on running servers.

Ecosystem data lakes

Life science companies, hospitals, universities, and other research-driven enterprises exchange data with partners for research and development or other initiatives. With AWS SFTP, partner teams can transfer data into your Amazon S3 bucket securely. Then you can apply the AWS portfolio of analytics and machine learning capabilities on the data to advance your research projects. And, you can do this without buying more hardware to run storage and compute on-premises.

FINRA regulates a critical part of the securities industry – brokerage firms doing business with the public in the United States. FINRA takes in up to 135 billion market events per day that are tracked, aggregated, and analyzed for the purpose of protecting investors.

"As an organization, FINRA has embraced Amazon S3 as our data lake to help us eliminate storage siloes, maintain one source of data truth, and drive down our infrastructure management costs. However, managing SFTP infrastructure for over 1,000 external users doing 6 million file transfers per month was a bit of a strain. Our solution was to build our new FileX platform on AWS, and use the new AWS Transfer for SFTP service. AWS Transfer for SFTP is helping us reduce our operational burden, keeping S3 as our data lake, while maintaining critical connection to our existing authentication systems for external users – so they don’t experience any disruption as we complete our migration of SFTP services to AWS."

Ranga Rajagopal, Senior Director, Enterprise Data Platforms - FINRA

Check out AWS SFTP features

AWS SFTP is designed to simplify file transfer operations for you. These capabilities make it possible.